


swinger high as any savior

by tanyart



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Near Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 21:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1200762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart/pseuds/tanyart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There will always be missions that you will survive, and you will feel terrible for it.  Sometimes there will be one that is worse than the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	swinger high as any savior

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in some near future. It’s a little off canon since chapter 51 came out, but not by much. I originally had a bigger idea for the story, but haha, that is what I get for writing at the speed of snail.
> 
> Title comes from The Trapeze Swinger by Iron and Wine.

Jean is no expert on taking care of Eren.  He makes a poor replacement in lieu of Mikasa or Armin, but it can’t be helped when Mikasa is confined–unwillingly _and_ resentfully confined–to strict bedrest and Armin is being bombarded with criticisms by the top brass for the Scouting Legion’s latest and most expensive fiasco. 

Mikasa and Armin would have figured it out sooner.  Jean thinks they could have _glanced_ at Eren’s listless fevered gaze and _knew_ why Eren refuses to talk, refuses to heal or be much of anything besides a barely-conscious corpse.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Jean says again to Eren’s broken body, white sheets soaked with blood and doing a better job at holding up skin and bone than Eren is doing for himself.  He sees Eren’s glassy stare flicker so he knows Eren can hear him but surprise, surprise – Eren won’t do a thing Jean says.  “Are you _trying_ to kill yourself?” And he storms out of the prison cell no one bothers to guard.     

He catches Armin at the break of his trial, busy conferring with Commander Erwin and a few other court officials.  It had been Armin’s strategy, with the whole of the plan resting on Eren’s shoulders.  The part of Jean that is Eren’s friend knows it is unfair to put that much responsibility on a single person, but the part of Jean that is the soldier, the squad leader of a dozen dead comrades, dully recognizes that it is Eren’s fault – and Armin’s official accountability to bear. 

“Armin,” he begins, cutting short when everyone’s gazes settle on him. 

It’s easy to forget how the rest of the world seems to run on strict bureaucracy and protocol.  Outside the walls Jean has direct superiors and subordinates, but even then they’re only three hundred people against thousands and in the Scouting Legion no one cares much for standing on ceremony.

“Jean,” Armin replies, very carefully. 

Jean hates following the precise steps of formal etiquette, but it’s clear that he’s overstepped some boundaries with his rank.  If it had been just Erwin and Armin alone he doubts they wouldn’t have minded the interruption, but Jean sees the others who wear the Military Police emblems and it’s a poor reflection on the Scouting Legion if he keeps addressing them so casually.  Jean glances at Erwin, and Armin isn’t fooled either, but it has to be Jean who excuses himself.

“My mistake, commander.  It can wait,” he says, straightening and giving a crisp salute. 

Erwin dismisses him with a nod and Jean heads back down to the main infirmary.

Mikasa, still beautiful even when she is up to her shoulders in bandages and splints, tries to sit up as Jean walks towards her bed.  Her injuries don’t make her any less intimidating, just the opposite.  Jean is pretty sure he’d be a crying and whimpering wreck if he had only half her wounds. 

“You stay put,” Jean says, pulling up a chair and sitting down.  He rests his hands over her blanket and adjusts the covers in a futile attempt to keep her tucked in. 

As usual Mikasa doesn’t give a damn for orders or firmly worded suggestions.  She wrenches one arm free from its cozy confines in the typical defiance that seems to run in the family.

“Eren?” she rasps.  She sinks back down into her pillow, a faint sheen of sweat forming across her forehead.

“He’s still hurt.  He won’t heal,” Jean says, looking down at her. 

“Won’t heal?” She sounds incredulous and snaps her gaze up at Jean as if she’s disappointed with _him_. 

“Well.  He’s not doing anything.”

“Eren doesn’t give up like that,” Mikasa says, with all the loyalty and experience that comes from knowing Eren for more than half her lifetime.  “He _fights_.”

Jean doesn’t know if he could ever have that kind of faith in anyone like the kind Mikasa has for Eren. It might be touching if he wasn’t so exasperated with it. 

“You say that, but have you seen him?” Jean starts to say angrily but stops himself before he becomes responsible for two incapacitated soldiers instead of just one.  He can very well imagine Mikasa hauling herself all the way down to Eren’s cell, broken bones or no.  He shakes his head.  “Can’t clean him when he’s still in pieces.  Can’t feed him if he doesn’t have a stomach.  The commander and Armin have their hands full with the MP. I don’t know what to do.”

Mikasa lets out a slow breath, pale with pain, but she grabs his hand and squeezes.

Jean stares at their hands. She’s got to be delirious, he thinks.  But it’s better advice than what he has so far.

 “You get some rest,” he says, standing, and she lets go of his hand. 

* * *

Jean’s not proud of it, but he’s watched Mikasa take Eren’s hand plenty of times.  During training.  At the bedside.  Straight out of the titan.  In the back of a cart full of corpses. 

He’s not sure when or how the jealousy shifted from Eren to Mikasa, or maybe he’s grown to be envious of both.  Jean wonders if he’s being punished for it.  Taking Eren’s limp hand isn’t all that glamorous as he had made it out to be, and Jean feels more ill than giddy. 

“From Mikasa,” Jean explains when Eren’s jaw unhinges—or becomes more unhinged as the case may be.  It’s damn close to falling completely off at this rate.  His grip tightens and he’s partly annoyed by how quickly it has gotten Eren’s attention. “She says to get healing or she’s coming up herself.”

Eren, bloody mess that he is, gurgles something unintelligent.  It sounds vaguely protesting but mostly tired.

“Maybe if you would just heal your vocal chords, you can properly tell me off.”

Eren doesn’t answer him, only shuts his eyes.  His shoulders shake for a second.  Jean figures he’s being laughed at.

“Are you even _trying_?”  Jean lets go of Eren’s broken fingers, feeling the grit of dried blood against his palms.  He agitated and nauseated from the smell of decaying flesh.  Eren is _not_ healing, and it doesn’t make sense.  He has seen Eren crushed under buildings, with a pole through his heart, ripped into pieces and limbs bitten off.  This should have been an easy fix, maybe a day or two of sleeping it off.  Not once has Jean ever considered that Eren might die from something so preventable as fever and infection. 

A thin whine emits from Eren, more from his open throat than his mouth.  It’s hard to tell which one of them is more mentally exhausted at this point.  Eren turns his head away, and if that isn’t a clear message for Jean to get the hell out, Jean doesn’t know what is.

* * *

Jean doesn’t say it aloud, not yet.  But Eren is not doing his part; he got a third of the legion killed, and he’s _sulking_. There’s no other word for it.  He’s heard some of it from doctors more specialized than Hange—there isn’t anything to suggest paralyzed injury; they don’t know what’s wrong. 

“You think he’s hurt somewhere else?” Hange says suddenly, looking up from the Scout Legion’s old reports, diagrams and notes of the female-type titan scattered over tables.  “Maybe something is diverting his energy.  A larger wound that would take more time.  Probably spinal?”

Hange goes on to talk about selective healing, but Jean gets an itch in the back of his mind, like trying to grasp a thought that won’t hold. 

He leaves the medical office, realization clicking into place.  For a moment, Jean stands in the middle of the hallway, angry and unsettled.

It’s hard to remember that Eren still has the same problems like everyone else, the same human doubts and fears. Jean is used to seeing how Eren faces everything head on, brash to the point of being blind, and how he won’t give up for anything at all.  But even an indestructible person like Eren must hurt somewhere where other people can’t see, except Jean _does_ see.  And it annoys him so much, being so attuned.

Jean doesn’t know Eren as well as Mikasa or Armin.  There isn’t a deep history or story between them, but Jean finds himself so inexplicably _furious_ that there’s still this connection, some kind of understanding that he can sense. 

He bursts into Eren’s room with less grace than what he would have liked.

“So you got a bunch of people killed,” he announces awfully, “So Armin’s getting chewed out by the brass, and Mikasa got like a million broken bones.”

Eren glances at Jean before looking down, oddly accepting, which confirms a lot of what Jean suspects.  He’s probably run those thoughts over his head a million times already.

Jean walks over to the bed of Eren’s bed and kneels down.  Mikasa is right; Eren doesn’t give up, he fights.  But sometimes he does it in the wrong way.

“You know,” Jean says, “you can have all the titan powers in the world but you can’t heal a guilty conscious that way.” 

On impulse, he braces his hands over the bed and presses his forehead against Eren’s.  Who knows how long Jean had wanted to do it, definitely under better circumstances, but he remembers a time where simple human touch would have done wonders for him, if only he had gotten that instead of a pocket of charred, fragmented bones.  Eren doesn’t break away from his gaze and, feeling embolden, Jean takes a breath.

“You know they will forgive you. Mikasa will forgive you.  Armin will forgive you.  And everyone else, I know they’re mad—but prove yourself. You’re always telling everyone to fight. So fight for their forgiveness if you want it so much.”

It’s easy for Jean to angle his head and puts his lips over Eren’s mouth, soft and brief.  The kiss feels dry over broken and decaying skin.  It smells of death, but he pulls back and sees that Eren’s ears have gone red and he’s hyperventilating through collapsed lungs, looking more alive for the first time in days.

And Eren’s finger moves, hooking onto the end of Jean’s sleeve like he wants to keep him there.

Jean stands up, heart beating fast, but he’s stubborn too.  “If you want to kiss me back then start healing yourself,” he blurts out.

It’s an underhanded and shitty kind of incentive, but that’s all he has.  It’s good to set small goals for now, different from all those grand plans Eren has that will take a lifetime to achieve, if it even happens at all.

He leaves Eren’s cell in a hurry, imagining that he can smell the rising steam from a body that is slowly realizing it can heal after all.

* * *

It takes a couple of more days, a few more talks and a lot of frustrated half-yells, but Eren finally has a whole face again and arms that can reach out and yank Jean into a kiss that’s ten times the payback he deserves.

“I’ll walk by tonight,” Eren declares against Jean’s cheek, all glow and determination.  “I’ll go down and stay with Mikasa.  And then I’ll see Armin and deal with the Military Court myself.”

Jean scoffs but doesn’t say anything for the moment.  He knows what it’s like to feel your heart’s twisting and see nothing but _dark_ , to feel guilt as you should, but somehow can’t let it go and move on against all logic and reasoning.  He nudges his face into the curve of Eren’s neck, not caring if the skin is just a little too hot for comfort.

Already the warmth and burn is fading from their mouths, but Eren has reals goals and real incentives now, not some sad and desperate promise of a kiss.  Both the infirmary and the court will have their hands full the second he gets out of bed.

It’s no sudden wonder how Jean has fallen for someone like Eren.  He moves away, and when Eren glances at him, Jean thinks there might be a chance that Eren could care for him like he does Mikasa and Armin, someday when there is time and peace of mind to spare.

“We’ll try again,” Eren mumbles, probably understanding a thing or two about compromised hearts and the delirium illness brings.  He settles back into his bed, cheeks red from more than just healing.  “When I’m better we’ll do something about this.”  He pauses.  “Unless you want to do something about it now.”

Jean lets out a sharp laugh. So much for being cautious. 

“No way,” he says, already heading out the door.  “Get on your own two feet first, then come get me yourself.”

* * *

Later that night, after Eren raises chaos in the infirmary and the courts, he does.


End file.
